McVitie's launches new £12m campaign

Cute little animals are the focus of United Biscuits’ new £12m multi-media advertising campaign for masterbrand McVitie’s, which aims to convey the ‘sweet’ appeal of the category.

Launching today (3 February), it is the biggest campaign of its kind for the manufacturer, with advertising focused on three products: Digestives, Chocolate Digestives and Jaffa Cakes.

The McVitie’s brand has been relaunched with a new pack design, which features the McVitie’s wheat sheaf logo, and will promoted via three 30-second televisions commercials, on air from today.

The ads feature puppies, kittens, and the planet’s smallest primate, a Tarsier, and adopt the strapline ‘Sweet’, to evoke the same feeling and emotional response to that of eating a simple McVitie’s biscuit, said United Biscuits.

In December 2013, British Baker reported that the manufacturer would be streamlining its sweet and savoury operations, with all sweet brands, with the exception of go ahead! to move under one masterbrand – McVitie’s. Its savoury brands, including Mini Cheddars, are to be rebranded as Jacob’s.

United Biscuits has also recently migrated to use of flow-wrap packaging technology for the production of all its Digestive brands, as part of a £35m investment plan at its company’s factory in Harlesden.

Martin Glenn, chief executive, United Biscuits, said that investment was being made in order to “revitalise the company”, which since the separation of its snacks business over a year ago, has been a “pure-play bakery company”.

“Our masterbrand campaign for McVitie’s is the result of 12 months of extensive customer research in which we aimed to get to the heart of the emotional role biscuits play in our lives.

“The new campaign aims to tap into consumers’ love for these brands as well supporting our efforts to drive growth for the category.”

Jon Eggleton, managing director, United Biscuits UK, said the company currently had a 25.1% of the sweet biscuit market, and a 28% share of the savoury market. “We want to follow up the growth in market share with more and more investment in the business,” he added.